Tuesday, December 04, 2012

Drayang –whose dream land

This article was written several months back. I visited Drayang accompanying other friends. The ambiance at Drayang really made me to re-think and introspect about the life at Drayang and about other lives as well.

I have read an article on Indian dance
bars in http://en.wikipedia.org, it says;“The
bar girls are, in many cases, sole support their families through their
earnings.” the bar girls could easily earn quite substantial amount of money and
this high earning attracted women from all over India and even as far away as
Nepal and Bangladesh. One Indian scammer is said to have spent Rs.one crore on
a single dancer overnight. When Indian government officially banned dance bars
in Maharastra State in the year 2005, in Mumbai alone 1.5 lakh people,
including 75,000 bar girls went out-of-work. due a lack of a rehabilitation
program some committed suicide, some outrightly became prostitutes, some illegally
trafficked to gulf countries or pimps sold them, some became waitress in hotels
earning much lesser income and some opened up their own shops.

We are unique with unique culture. We don’t call
it ‘dance-bar’ but ‘Drayang’. It is where patrons are entertained by dancers
seeking so called ‘request’.

The Drayangs are without any doubt, the top recreational spot
for lonely men. We have handful of them distributed over the country and most
of them are in our capital city and other commercial cities. It is no surprise
to see the audience and customers comprising of people from different walks of
life. They are mostly lonely men, depressed men, some senior citizens, some
youngsters, divorced women, some addicts and some office goers. It is indeed
good recreational spot for all. Employees may be over stressed with their daily
works, business people over-stressed with marketing and managing sales and of
course for idle minds to at least enjoy the ambiance I too pay visit to
Drayangs, but, it is not my favorite. I never favoured their fortune-too bad says some of my friends. When I am there, I hardly enjoy in line
with what most visitors do. I am always lost in my own thoughts. I just watch,
ponder and even after returning home, my thoughts are preoccupied with deep retrospection.

Just imagining-who could be those entertainers?

Why are they taking up the profession which is not regarded with
respect by our own society?

My intuition says, it can be attributed to reasons like broken
family, poor parents, desperate to earn for survival, no proper education, etc. And, yes it is exactly when I conversed with some of them.

But flipping my notions, it is definitely a decent job that
they survive. They are provided free accommodation and free fooding besides
their monthly wages. Also they don’t have to invest in garments to wear at their
duty like other office goers-they are provided by proprietors. On average they
are paid between Nu.4000 to 6000 per month exclusive of other incentives. Is it
too small? Definitely no. Just consider a guy after completing
his university graduate becomes a civil servant. His net income will be around
Nu. 14,000-16,000 per month, of which he has to pay more than 60% of his
earning as house rent, certain amount for electricity, fuel, grocery items and
other miscellaneous items. Will his balance be still higher than those Drayang
girls? This is a simple food for thought. The Draying
employees are definitely earning higher than employees of other sectors. And,
sometimes, well-off and inebriated patrons favour their fortune.

In fact, it is golden platform for unemployed girls without
sound qualification or else they might choose to sell their body for survival. For
example, banning of bar dancers in India forced many bar dancers to become
protitutes-because they had no other options.

Although it is still looked down by society as mean job, it
can become most sought after job if we change our attitude towards them. It is
about how I, you and society at large rate them. Let us not generalize and down
look them for being noble friend of entertainment during times of
loneliness. If we get to them, they will have their own stories to tell. Even if you can't respect, at least, let's not downcast their state of survival, after all, they are standing on their own feet. It is good form of entertainment when everything is taken positively.